Salon.com > Trans

Trans woman shares her male-to-female transition on YouTube

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 20:58:00 +0000

YouTube user iiGethi documented her male-to-female transition with roughly one thousand photos over a three-year period. She then edited them into a single video, which quickly went viral.

The footage is striking for a few reasons. The first is perhaps the most superficial (and obvious): iiGethi's transformation is astonishing. Through hormone therapy and Facial Feminization Surgery, her appearance changes dramatically, literally before the viewer's eyes.

The second isn't about what iiGethi captured, but the video itself. Because of social stigma and violence often faced by trans people, many try to maintain their anonymity while transitioning. But iiGethi's YouTube stardom (there are nearly 4 million views to date) does quite the opposite. Much like Against Me frontwoman Laura Jane Grace's coming out story in Rolling Stone, iiGethi is inviting public conversation about a very private process.

What took Biden so long on trans discrimination?

Wed, 31 Oct 2012 21:37:00 +0000

Vice President Joe Biden called transgender discrimination "the civil rights issue of our time" to a woman outside a campaign office in Sarasota, Fla. Tuesday. Although his comment was largely inaudible to pool reporters, his interlocutor later said she had described the abuse faced by her trans friends:

Linda Carragher Bourne of Sarasota said her daughter was Miss Trans New England and asked if he would help them. "A lot of my friends are being killed, and they don't have the civil rights yet. These guys are gonna make it happen," she told the pool.

Biden has been a vocal supporter of LGBT rights -- notably endorsing same-sex marriage before the president. Many will welcome Biden's comment about transgender rights. Bourne took to Facebook to elatedly recount here interaction with him: "It was a miraculous (to me) and magical moment in time... He’s in our corner, friends!!!" [sic.]

However, other trans allies and advocates reacted to Biden more critically. One trans activist acquaintance of mine took to Facebook to comment, "Oh, Fuck off Joe Biden," and was followed up by a fellow commenter noting, "You mean Uncle Joe doesn't have the right invested in him by White Male Privilege to tell marginalized communities what 'the Civil Rights Issue is of our time' [is]?"

3.4 percent of U.S. adults identify as LGBT

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 19:53:00 +0000

A nationwide Gallup study based on interviews with 121,000 people found that 3.4 percent of U.S. adults identify as either lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. As the AP reports, the study may serve to upend current prevailing beliefs about sexuality:

"Contemporary media often think of LGBT people as disproportionately white, male, urban and pretty wealthy," said the report's lead author, demographer Gary Gates of the UCLA School of Law's Williams Institute. "But the data reveal that, relative to the general population, the LGBT population has a larger proportion of non-white people and clearly is not overly wealthy."

According to the survey, which was conducted between June and September, 4.6 percent of African Americans identify as LGBT, along with 4 percent of Hispanics, 4.3 percent of Asians and 3.2 percent of whites.

Overall, a third of those identifying as LGBT are non-white, the report said.

... the Gallup survey found that identification as LGBT is highest among Americans with the lowest levels of education. Among those with a high school education or less, 3.5 percent identify as LGBT, compared with 2.8 percent of those with a college degree and 3.2 percent of those with postgraduate education.